Service shortstop Rilen Niclai flips the ball to get the out at first. Photo by Stephanie Burgoon/Alaska Sports Report
The high school baseball season has just arrived, but Rilen Niclai is already going, going, gone.
The reigning Gatorade Alaska Player of the Year homered in his second at-bat in Tuesday’s season opener for the Service Cougars, who won 14-2 in five innings over Eagle River at Bartlett High School.
The senior shortstop scolded a fastball over the fence in left-center field for his fifth career home run in the Cook Inlet Conference. He’s coming off a junior season in which he hit .381 with three home runs and 17 RBIs in 21 games, and led the Cougars to the ASAA Division I state title game.
With temperatures hovering in the low 40s on Tuesday, Niclai made the term ‘frozen rope’ come to life after he smashed a shot that never got 20 feet off the ground. It was an absolute missile.
Niclai’s two-run bomb in the second inning put the Cougars ahead for good at 3-1. In the fifth, he nearly mashed another tater after hitting a foul-ball home run that hit the building behind left field before drawing a walk and scoring to make it 9-2.
Service’s Connor Monahan went 3-for-3 with three RBIs and Saga Garsha tripled as the Cougars banged out 13 hits.
Niclai, Garsha and Jazz Abad each finished with two RBIs to complement a pitching staff that racked up nine Ks.
The field at Bartlett was surrounded by tall snow berms, some as high as 8 feet. It still looks like winter everywhere except on the all-turf field, which glistened under the sun. Before the field was built in 2014, playing in mid-April would have been a pipe dream.
When the CIC season kicked off on Monday, the field was covered by snow in the morning before the field crew cleared it to make way for the earliest start since 2018.
Service’s Kegan Lennox rounds second and looks for third. Photo by Stephanie Burgoon/Alaska Sports Report
Eagle River catcher Cash Seebold loads up for a throw to second base. Photo by Stephanie Burgoon/Alaska Sports Report
Eagle River’s Cash Seebold went 2-for-3 with a triple, while Justyn BetSayad went 2-for-2 with a double.
Tuesday was the first Eagle River game coached by new head coach Scotty Strickland, who took over for Bill Lierman, the former bench boss who retired after posting a school-record 75 wins between 2021 and 2025.
Lierman also holds the school record for wins at Chugiak, where he piled up 97 victories in 14 seasons from 2000-13. Together, his 172 wins ranks third in Alaska history, trailing only Sitka’s Ed Conway and South’s Taylor Nerland.
Service skipper Willie Paul is seventh on that list with 117 wins, in large part because of the success he’s enjoyed with Niclai and his older brother Coen, a 2024 MLB draft pick who is playing collegiately at Arizona State University.
Last week, Coen hit three home runs in four games for the Sun Devils, including two in one game, the first time an Alaskan had done that in a quarter-century.
A few days later, little bro hit a big fly as he begins his assault on the CIC single-season home run record of four, which was last accomplished a quarter-century ago.
Service 131 18 – 14 13 2
Eagle River 101 00 – 2 6 0
Service – Miller, Precosky (3), Monahan (4), Cummings (5) and Kosaka. Eagle River – Marrero, BetSayad (2), Stevens (5) and Seebold. 2B – Eagle River: BetSayad. 3B – Service: Garsha, Seebold. HR – Service: Niclai.
